by Andrea Rosen, Curator of\u00a0Under the Surface.<\/em><\/p>\n The Portrait of Thomas Bacon<\/i> exemplifies striking compositional strategies that invite close, slow looking. Between the two poles of the composition\u2014the subject of the portrait in the lower third and a tear in the backdrop at the top\u2014are at first indecipherable marks, which turn out to be the marks of a boot-heel. Nothing is known about the subject Thomas Bacon except his name, though it was likely that he was a model or a dancer. After encountering surrealism in Paris in the mid-1920s, George Platt Lynes settled in New York, where he made a career of portrait, fashion, and dance photography, often inflected with a surrealist aesthetic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Andrea Rosen, Curator of\u00a0Under the Surface. The Portrait of Thomas Bacon exemplifies striking compositional strategies that invite close, slow looking. Between the two poles of the composition\u2014the subject of the portrait in the lower third and a tear in the backdrop at the top\u2014are at first indecipherable marks, which turn out to be the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":76,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[19],"class_list":{"0":"post-75","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-curatorial-label","8":"category-portraiture","9":"tag-george-platt-lynes","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/surrealist-photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Image details:<\/h6>\n
George Platt Lynes (American, 1907\u20131955)
\nPortrait of Thomas Bacon<\/i>, ca. 1938
\ngelatin silver print
\nMuseum Purchase \u00a01989.69
\n\u00a9 Estate of George Platt Lynes<\/h6>\n